—  Phil Crawford  —

Born in Vancouver in 1957, I grew up beside the UBC Endowment Lands with the forest on one side and the city on the other. Moving to Nelson, B.C. in 1988 where I still live and work just blocks from downtown and the woods. With no formal training as an artist, I started to carve wood while working as a logger, house painter and various other professions. In 1992 I met Pat West, a soapstone sculptor, whom has been my mentor and I began working with stone. My sculptures are done entirely with hand tools, only using power tools when constructing the bases.

 My technique I laughingly call trial and hopefully not too many errors. I generally only have a vague idea of what a finished piece might look like when I begin. The way I see it, is there are an infinite number of sculptures in any piece of stone, so I have a lot of choices to make. Getting started is the hard part, I just have to trust that I will figure it out as I go along.